Saturday, December 28, 2013

Snow

For days, the weather
forecast had been for a very stormy weekend, starting from Thursday and on
through Saturday, with lots of rain, wind, and a good possibility of snow in
the areas here where there is usually some snow every winter. Jerusalem does usually have one snow day a
year, with a few centimeters of snow, and then half of the country drives up to
Jerusalem to see it, creating, of course, huge traffic jams. By the time most
of the winter-starved visitors get to town, the snow has mostly melted and what
is left is slushy and dirty.

Many friends asked me if I
was ready for the snowstorm. No chance
of snow here, I told them, we are below the snow line. The snow usually ends about 4 kilometers from
us, which is at a higher elevation. Where we are, the temperature is usually
just a few degrees too high for snow and certainly not cold enough for the snow
to stick. The last time we had a big
snow here was twenty years ago. So I was
not worried, we wouldn’t be having snow.

Friday morning I woke up to
a dark freezing house, no electricity, and outside the window, everything
covered in snow. True, the snow wasn’t
very deep, only a few centimeters, but it was enough to cover everything in
white, weigh down the trees and bushes, and knock out the electric lines. Although we had no way of hearing the news at
the time (having become a total resident of the modern world, I don’t even have
a battery operated radio at home), the storm had been quite severe, with heavy
snow further up the road and into Jerusalem.
The weight of the snow had brought down electric lines, and trees that fell on
the electric lines, and the repairmen from the electric company were unable to
get to some of the locations to fix the lines, due to piled up snow. And the storm was still going on, rain all
over the country, and snow still falling in the north and in Jerusalem area.

The snow we had was not nice
fluffy fun snow, it was heavy, wet, slushy snow – it was cold enough to freeze,
but not cold enough for it to last. By
early afternoon it was mostly melted away.
The dogs were not impressed by this, they found it annoying that their
feet were cold, and that everything was so wet.
This wet snow was much more penetrating than rain, and all the dogs
looked thoroughly miserable.

It's an advantage to be a smooth when it is wet out...

Cold feet!

The rain kept falling, and
there was still no electricity. You
would think that, since I had spent 17 years living without electricity, this
would not be a great hardship – but I have become thoroughly spoiled and accustomed
to modern amenities. I don’t have the
equipment to cope with a lack of electricity now, so was left sitting with a
few candles around the room, reading by flashlight, with five sweaters and a
blanket to keep warm. Habibi and the
podengos joined me on the sofa, any suggestions that they might want to go out
for a while met with scornful looks.

We were lucky – the
electricity in our area was restored by the end of the day. In other parts of the Jerusalem area, there was no electricity for
as much as four days. The snow had
stopped traffic (just to put things in proportion – there was altogether about
40 centimeters of snow in Jerusalem).
People were unable to get through the streets and abandoned their cars at the
side of the road, which made it totally impossible for anyone to get through. For the electric company workers to get to
the places that needed repairing, first the city had to tow away all the cars
that were blocking the way. The highway
to Jerusalem (the main highway of Israel)
was completely closed for three days, and people were stuck either unable to
leave their homes or unable to get home.

It was quite nice, though,
to be able to look out and see a totally empty highway, where usually there
were masses of cars and daily traffic jams, and to enjoy the quiet.

Fortunately for us, we got
our electricity back after only one day without, and the telephone and internet
were back after two days. Parts of the
area were without all of these essentials for as much as four days or more –
and our modern society is so dependent on this, that there are few people who
have emergency equipment – heaters working on kerosene, camping lights, or
anything of that sort. And it was very
cold (by Israeli standards!), and very wet – not at all pleasant.

There has been a lot of
criticism of the utility companies for not repairing things fast enough, of the
government for not being prepared…I must admit, that being without was very
frustrating, but the companies worked very hard to try and get things under
control. And somehow, no matter how
prepared we may think we are for all eventualities, nature always wins in the
end!

The dogs were not
impressed. They ran around as usual in
the snow and the rain, and, to my surprise, were quite quiet – often the
silence when there is little or no traffic encourages them to bark – they can
hear the echo from the hills opposite us and think they are answering those
“other” dogs. But this time, apparently
the peace of the snowy hills influenced them, and they ran and played with
little barking. Even the podengos, after
a few minutes of protest and foot lifting about the cold and wet, began to dig
around in the snow to see what was under it.

Habibi, however, found all
of this absolutely unnecessary and annoying.
He was not at all interested in exploring the snow and cold, and when
forced to go out, he sat on top of the dog houses, to remove himself as much as
possible from that slushy stuff. He knew
that his job was to keep my feet warm, and was very glad to perform such an
essential task.

We are back to normal now,
normal winter temperatures which are about the same as summer temperatures in a
good portion of the world. The dogs are dry, most of them have been groomed to
get rid of the relics of the bad weather, the highway is back to normal activity,
and the dogs are barking as usual.